November 15, 2005

Today is my mother’s (mumble, mumble) birthday and, as I did last year, I’m showing you a picture and telling you a little more about her. This picture is from her senior year college year book. Back then it was called “Harris Teacher’s College” but now it’s called Harris-Stowe State College. My mom was the first person in her family to graduate from college. Actually, she was also the first person in her family to graduate from high school and, probably, even from grammar school.

My mom knew that she’d need to get a decent job so that she could support her father and the alternatives for women in those days were rather limited: either teaching or nursing. My mom had never had a great deal of interest in science so teaching it was. She became a remedial reading teacher. That’s about the equivalent of special education these days (I don’t know that that specialty existed then). I’ll tell you more about her teaching career some other time.

I’ve become the family historian by default and I have custody of the old yearbooks (from which this was taken) and such. Paging through the more than 60 year old book I couldn’t help but think that most of these young women are probably gone already (one or two were rather snappy numbers, by the way).

But my mom survived and prospered and she’s still hanging in there even though nearly everyone she knew back then is gone. What’s her response when she loses old friends? Why, make new friends, of course. So she’s joined a book discussion club and a bible discussion club. She’s got a season ticket to the opera and a season ticket to the shows at the Fox. Up until very recently she frequently worked in political campaigns and she volunteered to teach reading to young women who, uh, had quite a few problems.

So, that’s my mom. I think she ought to blog. She’s certainly got something to say.